14 Most Improved Schools in the 2014 US News College Rankings

First off, before we proceed any further, we want to go on record as saying that college rankings do not matter.

Yep, we said it. Never, under any circumstances, should you base your decision on which college or university to attend on the annual college rankings released by U.S. News, Princeton Review, or any other number of rankers. Your decision should be based on your personal preferences, career goals, and place of residence. It will be what fits you, not what fits a room full of analysts at Fortune magazine.

Having said that, we can’t help checking out the stats, just for fun, to see who is where in the list.

The top 25 schools are pretty boring: they play musical chairs with one another but few real upsets happen (“Princeton is number one again? Talk about exciting!”). So the real fun is in seeing which college and universities make the biggest improvements. Therein is the real drama of the college rankings.

We searched the U.S. News 2014 rankings and compared them to the 2013 rankings and found that the following 14 colleges and universities had made the biggest improvements: